I thought I repacked my hubs correctly when I converted from vault to regular grease but a premature rear seal failure is making me question that. So here’s what I’m working with, my trailer originally had vault hubs. The spindles don’t have a hole in the middle for a grease fitting so the only way to get grease into the hub is to pack the hub with grease before putting it on the spindle and then after putting the hub on, take a grease gun and squirt as much grease as possible around the spindle before putting in the outer bearing, washer, and nut. Then I put on a bearing buddy and squirted grease into it until the blue indicator popped out. It only took 2 or 3 pumps to make that happen.
My questions are, when packing the hub with grease, you want the hub FULL of grease, right? I tried to fill the area between the rear seal and inner bearing full too. Could it be possible that I overfilled this area and that caused my rear seal to blow out after less than 1000 miles? It’s possible that I should have replaced my wear sleeve but I didn’t because my vault hubs weren’t leaking so I assumed the sleeve was still ok. I plan to replace the wear sleeve this time around. Also, how exactly does the bearing buddy get grease into the hub? Behind the bearing buddy is a nut and washer that pretty much covers the outer bearing and the spring loaded indicator isn’t that strong. I don’t see how pumping grease into the bearing buddy gets any grease past that washer and into the bearings. Am I wrong and thinking that’s what it’s supposed to do? Lastly, when I removed the dust cover from my bearing buddies, there was grease in them that had leaked out the front of the bearing buddy. How much seepage like this is normal?
Any insight is appreciated.